For us, 2020 is the story of Dixie Baby.
In case you’re wondering, Dixie Baby is our camper van, the name derived (phonetically) from the letters on her numberplate – DX BBE. (We’re not planning to go to Dixie in her!)
We’d been dreaming of getting a camper van for years, but we needed something fairly small, relatively cheap but still capable of sleeping two people and a dog (Edna). With Dixie Baby Annie found the perfect solution: we got it in January, and at the first opportunity we were off to a camp site to try it out. In retrospect, perhaps a bit early in the year for experiment like
that. Still, we learned some of the limitations of squeezing two people and a long-legged dog into the available space. Like, for example, the dog wants most of the space. However, I did discover that by bending my body in the right places and hooking my feet under the steering wheel I could get relatively comfortable. Relative to what I had been before, anyhow.
I just had to avoid kicking the horn and waking up the rest of the camp site.
Then Covid, and lockdown. Dixie Baby was left standing on the drive as the weeks turned into months and the terrible pandemic news unfolded around the world.
Not that we were idle. Annie in particular was kept busy: Church might be closed, but there were people and families who needed help, needed food, needed connection with other people and encouragement throughout lockdown. She and others made videos, delivered food, kept
in touch and cared.
For me it was a great opportunity to finish some writing projects - two novels and a book of short SF stories. Andy, home from Liverpool Uni for the lockdown, had some course work to
do. Matt, furloughed from his job, took another one, working at the Co-Op.
We came through OK. None of us or any of our family got the virus. or at least, we didn't show any symptoms. At that stage there was no testing to make sure. All the same, we were glad when we could get out and about again, and Dixie Baby too us to a beautiful little campsite in Batcombe Vale. 'Us' in this case was me, Annie, Matt, Andy and Edna. Which would have been impossible with Dixie on her own, but with the addition of a large awning, all five of us could sleep in comfort. This is known as learning from experience.
Dixie Baby was also useful when Andy went back to Uni - all that extra space for transporting studenty stuff up to Liverpool - and she really fulfilled her main function over the summer, when we visited three campsites in three different parts of the country. First Porlock in Devon, then up to the Derbyshire Peak District, and finally a few days in the Cotswolds. A great time for walking and enjoying the fresh air and scenery. Also good times eating out (when Covid restrictions permitted) and some interesting nights listening to a gale blowing and wondering if the awning would survive. It did, and so did we.
It was Tom and Charlotte who go the best use out of her, though. They borrowed the van for a tour of Scotland, driving all round the coast and stopping at a different place every night. We were a little jealous!
As we approached September we had a terrible phone call.
“Mum’s had a fall. She’s in hospital, and they don’t think she’s got long.”
That was from my brother, Peter. In less than an hour Annie and I were in Dixie Baby and heading up the motorway. She can shift a bit when you put your foot down. We were in Nottingham and by Mum’s bedside about two and a half hours later.
She died later that evening, without recovering consciousness.
The funeral was in her home church at Sandiacre. As was necessary under Covid restrictions, it was a low-key affair, with mostly just the immediate family present. But all the many cards and messages served to remind us of how loved she was by so many people. She left a
hole, but also a wonderful legacy of a life fully and completely lived. She was 89.
Dixie Baby took us home again.
It was getting late in the year. We did have a few days at a camp site on the south coast, not far from Portland Bill (that’s a place, not one of the locals). But for our last trip away we decided to hire a cottage in North Devon, not far from Ilfracombe. We still travelled down in Dixie Baby, though, for the convenience of extra packing space. And besides, Edna likes it better!
On the road down, Annie and I talked about our concerns over Dad. He’s 90, and with Mum’s passing was living alone. My brothers who live in the area were doing their best to look after him, but it was stressful for them and he wasn’t doing well. As a family we had been looking into the possibilities of a care home or a live-in carers, but both came with their downsides, especially in regard to cost and reduced privacy.
“He could come and live with us,” Annie said. And once we had the idea, it was obvious. We had a downstairs room that he could use, with a bathroom attached.
Would he even be willing to move out of the house he’d lived in for so long? It was, after all, the house where I and all my younger siblings had grown up, the house he’d shared with Mum, the place he knew best.
Turned out that he was. Ever a realist, he was all too aware of his own increasing frailty and need of help. There was a fair bit of re-arranging to be done to make it happen, but – to cut it short – it happened.
So, 2020. What a year for us, what a year for the world.
As we come to the end of it, Dad is settling in well. Annie is as busy as ever, finding ways to help people, Matt is back at his main job, and I’m trying to catch up on some bookkeeping. We’re all looking forward to seeing Andy back from Uni, and the rest of the family over Christ-mas. We’re all too aware that this will be a Christmas without Mum: but all the more reason to remember with joy all the Christmas’s we enjoyed with her. Always missed, always loved.
2020 has had more than its fair share of tears and sorrow. The whole world has suffered from Covid19 and its consequences. But there has also be courage and joy and wonder. And whatever the past year has brought you, whatever is in store for us in 2021, we have this encouragement from Paul (not me, the Saintly one!):
‘So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.’
(1 Corinthians 13:13).
May you and yours know these blessings at Christmas and into the New Year.
And Dixie Baby? Sitting on the drive, only used for a few local runs recently, but all ready to take us on some new adventures next year. We’re thinking we’d like to follow Tom and Charlotte’s route round Scotland sometime. When it gets a bit warmer – I'm a fair weather camper!
In case you’re wondering, Dixie Baby is our camper van, the name derived (phonetically) from the letters on her numberplate – DX BBE. (We’re not planning to go to Dixie in her!)
We’d been dreaming of getting a camper van for years, but we needed something fairly small, relatively cheap but still capable of sleeping two people and a dog (Edna). With Dixie Baby Annie found the perfect solution: we got it in January, and at the first opportunity we were off to a camp site to try it out. In retrospect, perhaps a bit early in the year for experiment like
that. Still, we learned some of the limitations of squeezing two people and a long-legged dog into the available space. Like, for example, the dog wants most of the space. However, I did discover that by bending my body in the right places and hooking my feet under the steering wheel I could get relatively comfortable. Relative to what I had been before, anyhow.
I just had to avoid kicking the horn and waking up the rest of the camp site.
Then Covid, and lockdown. Dixie Baby was left standing on the drive as the weeks turned into months and the terrible pandemic news unfolded around the world.
Not that we were idle. Annie in particular was kept busy: Church might be closed, but there were people and families who needed help, needed food, needed connection with other people and encouragement throughout lockdown. She and others made videos, delivered food, kept
in touch and cared.
For me it was a great opportunity to finish some writing projects - two novels and a book of short SF stories. Andy, home from Liverpool Uni for the lockdown, had some course work to
do. Matt, furloughed from his job, took another one, working at the Co-Op.
We came through OK. None of us or any of our family got the virus. or at least, we didn't show any symptoms. At that stage there was no testing to make sure. All the same, we were glad when we could get out and about again, and Dixie Baby too us to a beautiful little campsite in Batcombe Vale. 'Us' in this case was me, Annie, Matt, Andy and Edna. Which would have been impossible with Dixie on her own, but with the addition of a large awning, all five of us could sleep in comfort. This is known as learning from experience.
Dixie Baby was also useful when Andy went back to Uni - all that extra space for transporting studenty stuff up to Liverpool - and she really fulfilled her main function over the summer, when we visited three campsites in three different parts of the country. First Porlock in Devon, then up to the Derbyshire Peak District, and finally a few days in the Cotswolds. A great time for walking and enjoying the fresh air and scenery. Also good times eating out (when Covid restrictions permitted) and some interesting nights listening to a gale blowing and wondering if the awning would survive. It did, and so did we.
It was Tom and Charlotte who go the best use out of her, though. They borrowed the van for a tour of Scotland, driving all round the coast and stopping at a different place every night. We were a little jealous!
As we approached September we had a terrible phone call.
“Mum’s had a fall. She’s in hospital, and they don’t think she’s got long.”
That was from my brother, Peter. In less than an hour Annie and I were in Dixie Baby and heading up the motorway. She can shift a bit when you put your foot down. We were in Nottingham and by Mum’s bedside about two and a half hours later.
She died later that evening, without recovering consciousness.
The funeral was in her home church at Sandiacre. As was necessary under Covid restrictions, it was a low-key affair, with mostly just the immediate family present. But all the many cards and messages served to remind us of how loved she was by so many people. She left a
hole, but also a wonderful legacy of a life fully and completely lived. She was 89.
Dixie Baby took us home again.
It was getting late in the year. We did have a few days at a camp site on the south coast, not far from Portland Bill (that’s a place, not one of the locals). But for our last trip away we decided to hire a cottage in North Devon, not far from Ilfracombe. We still travelled down in Dixie Baby, though, for the convenience of extra packing space. And besides, Edna likes it better!
On the road down, Annie and I talked about our concerns over Dad. He’s 90, and with Mum’s passing was living alone. My brothers who live in the area were doing their best to look after him, but it was stressful for them and he wasn’t doing well. As a family we had been looking into the possibilities of a care home or a live-in carers, but both came with their downsides, especially in regard to cost and reduced privacy.
“He could come and live with us,” Annie said. And once we had the idea, it was obvious. We had a downstairs room that he could use, with a bathroom attached.
Would he even be willing to move out of the house he’d lived in for so long? It was, after all, the house where I and all my younger siblings had grown up, the house he’d shared with Mum, the place he knew best.
Turned out that he was. Ever a realist, he was all too aware of his own increasing frailty and need of help. There was a fair bit of re-arranging to be done to make it happen, but – to cut it short – it happened.
So, 2020. What a year for us, what a year for the world.
As we come to the end of it, Dad is settling in well. Annie is as busy as ever, finding ways to help people, Matt is back at his main job, and I’m trying to catch up on some bookkeeping. We’re all looking forward to seeing Andy back from Uni, and the rest of the family over Christ-mas. We’re all too aware that this will be a Christmas without Mum: but all the more reason to remember with joy all the Christmas’s we enjoyed with her. Always missed, always loved.
2020 has had more than its fair share of tears and sorrow. The whole world has suffered from Covid19 and its consequences. But there has also be courage and joy and wonder. And whatever the past year has brought you, whatever is in store for us in 2021, we have this encouragement from Paul (not me, the Saintly one!):
‘So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.’
(1 Corinthians 13:13).
May you and yours know these blessings at Christmas and into the New Year.
And Dixie Baby? Sitting on the drive, only used for a few local runs recently, but all ready to take us on some new adventures next year. We’re thinking we’d like to follow Tom and Charlotte’s route round Scotland sometime. When it gets a bit warmer – I'm a fair weather camper!